Overcoming
by lannistersdebt
Summary: I'm sorry for the person I became. I'm sorry that it took so long for me to change.


Written for QLFC Semi Finals  
Wigtown Wanderers  
Beater 1  
Prompt: Fahrenheit 451 - A character overcomes their own ignorance.  
Additional Prompts: [word] freedom, [song] "Who I Am Hates Who I've Been"- Resilient K, [plot point] a funeral

* * *

"_I'm sorry for the person I became_

_I'm sorry that it took so long for me to change_

_I'm ready to try and never become that way again_

_'Cause who I am hates who I've been_

_Who I am hates who I've been."  
_\- "Who I Am Hates Who I've Been", Resilient K

If you had asked Percy Weasley a year ago where he thought he'd be today, his answer would have been anywhere but a random pub in Muggle London, tracing sweat lines on a nearly empty bottle of ale. He was only a short walk from the wizarding neighborhood he lived in before his abandonment of the Ministry and the thought of that time made his heart constrict again and his breath came short. He looked up and waved his hand at the bartender, indicating he was ready for another drink.

He wanted to stop thinking, to stop feeling, just for a moment… to go back in time and change so much about what he had done—and what he hadn't. But that was what funerals and change were all about, weren't they? Reflections and realizations. He sighed and took a long pull from his new bottle.

Fred hadn't deserved to die. If anyone did, Percy thought, it was himself. Or… at least the person he had been deserved it.

He had always striven to prove himself and had a very strong need for recognition. That was apparent from a young age and he'd never really grown out of it, much to his mother's disappointment. It hadn't mattered whether he and his siblings were making something or doing a simple task at home to help out, he would go above and beyond what was necessary to try to get a couple words of praise from either parent, especially his mother. That need only grew as he aged and he did all that he could to get affirmations—especially at the Ministry.

He allied himself with people he thought had more power than they did because of that and he often wondered how things would be different if he'd just listened to Dumbledore. Of all his siblings, he was the only one who hadn't. It was a bit tragically comedic, then, that he was the only one who _had _followed his father's footsteps and gone into the Ministry. And yet… it hadn't been family that had drawn him there. It had been that need for recognition and another, almost equally strong, desire for order and organization. He could get all of that in the Ministry.

Arthur had an obsession with Muggles that Percy—and most of the wizards at work—could not understand. That obsession had kept him in the same department almost his entire career, with very little room for advancement. That, in turn, led to financial strain on the family and each of its members took that strain differently.

But money itself was not all that had propelled him to the Ministry. Percy felt he could genuinely do good work there and he knew that if he could propel himself through the ranks, rise above anything his father had done, he'd also do something better than any of his siblings. He was constantly in competition with them, from grades to prefect positions, and the Ministry was the one place he knew they'd never wanted to end up working at.

Life then had been more about representations, not about who he was. As a prefect he was a disciplining force and represented authority and his House. As Head Boy, he represented both Hogwarts and his own accomplishment. As a member of the Ministry, his representation shifted to that of his entire family, from a younger generation than his father… and when he moved up through the ranks to Junior Assistant to the Minister, it shifted again—and not necessarily for the better. Percy had alienated himself from the Weasleys, and while he still bore the name, he was only representing himself.

He'd thought his family would be proud of all of his hard work when the promotion happened, but they weren't. Arthur told him he thought the position had been offered just as a ploy to be able to spy upon the family, who had made it well known that they supported Dumbledore's claims of the return of Lord Voldemort, as well as Harry and Dumbledore himself.

Percy and Arthur had gotten into a huge row that night and Percy moved out as soon as he had his bags packed. He'd told his father that he'd had to struggle against a lousy reputation ever since he started at the Ministry, and it was Arthur's fault. And that wasn't the worst of it—Percy had also said that Arthur had no ambition, was the reason that they were poor, and that he was an idiot for believing Dumbledore's claim that Voldemort was back.

Molly came to London to try to speak to him. He shut the door in her face.

Harry, who was practically family, had a hearing. He wouldn't even look at him.

Molly sent him a package for Christmas with her traditional knitted sweater. He sent it back.

He heard his father had been attacked by a snake whose venom had strange qualities, and he didn't visit him. He didn't even ask anybody how he was.

He held Harry's shoulder during Fudge's attempt to arrest Dumbledore when he should have just let him go.

And after the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, Percy knew the truth about Voldemort. _He was back. _And Percy felt like a fool.

On the first of August, Rufus Scrimgeour was killed and replaced by Pius Thicknesse, a puppet for Voldemort. Percy knew then, with more certainty than ever before, that he had been a fool and yet now he could do nothing. Under the eye of the other side, he was stuck, and with each day that passed, he felt the tightness in his chest getting worse.

His pride had caused people to lose lives.

He worked his jaw as he stared at the grains in the counter at the pub. One of those people had been his younger brother, and his funeral had been today. Percy was glad he'd been able to see Fred again before he was killed, but it was too little and nearly too late.

"I'm better now, Fred," he mumbled against the mouth of his bottle. "I get what you were all trying to say before… and our family is more important than anything at work. Sorry I didn't _really _realize it in time."

He dropped the bottle back to the counter and his face fell into his hands, finally letting the tears come. He cried for his brother. He cried for everyone else who had died in the war. He cried for his family. But perhaps most of all, Percy Weasley was crying for himself and this strange sort of freedom he felt from figuring out what he hadn't really seen before.


End file.
